"If you can understand my feelings, this house still has a place in my heart," writes Richard Ricci, born and raised on Newberry Avenue but living for decades in Arizona.Staten Island Advance/Virginia Sherry

DONGAN HILLS -- Native Staten Islander Richard Ricci, born and raised on Newberry Avenue but living for decades in Arizona, sent an email earlier this month to the Advance, asking whether his former family home at No. 100 survived last October’s Hurricane Sandy intact.

He explained that he was born on Staten Island in 1934, and lived at 76 Newberry until 1943, when his parents, Harry and the former Mable Leofanti, moved to No. 100.

Ricci and his four siblings — Harry, Thomas, Leonard, and Elaine — lived in that home until 1960, when the family relocated to Arizona, where Ricci, father of five and grandfather to 16, still resides.

“If you can understand my feelings, this house still has a place in my heart,” he wrote. “It sat on property than ran due east to Remsen Street, then south to a driveway opposite Evergreen Street that led to a no-longer-existing, two-car garage.”

We learned more about his family’s roots and Island history.

His father, who was born in Turin in northern Italy, owned H.O.R. Siren and Signal Company on Richmond Terrace in West Brighton, doing a brisk business during and after World War II, producing air-raid and police car and ambulance sirens, he recalled.

The business was closed in the early 1950s, due to lack of demand, and Dad moved on to build “houses on Newberry Avenue, several of them in the woods directly across the street from where we lived at No. 100,” Ricci said.

Newberry Avenue was something of a family compound, similar to other streets in Dongan Hills where Italian families lived in close proximity to one another: His Italian-born paternal grandmother, Angela Ricci, lived at 68 Newberry Ave., and his maternal grandmother, Julia Leofanti, who was born in Florence, Italy, lived at nearby 20 Bank Place.

Ricci graduated from PS 11 in 1948, and St. Peter’s Boys High School in 1952.

He attended Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., for two years, and graduated from Arizona State University’s College of Engineering in 1970, with a degree in mechanical design engineering.

He was employed for 30 years at General Electric and other major companies, specializing in engineering product design and management, and retired in 1990.

Ricci now keeps busy with golf, woodworking, hiking and camping, and “lots of travel in the U.S. and Canada” to visit his far-flung immediate family members. 

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Ricci still retains fond memories of his family’s neighbor, Ed Colucci, a World War II veteran in his 90s who still lives on Newberry Avenue.

“I had a fantastic relationship with him, and a lot of memories about this gentleman,” he said.

“He came out and helped me after I split my chin, riding my first tricycle, and took me home to my mother.”

“We walked home from PS 11 along Richmond Road to Newberry Avenue, and always stopped at a candy store at the top of Burgher Avenue and then went down Newberry.

“Mr. Colucci had an old Model T or Model A Ford that we loved,” Ricci remembered.

Despite Ricci’s long years of residency in Arizona, “I still have a lot of fond memories of Staten Island,” he told us. “And I’m still a New York Yankees fan. I’ve been following them since 1947!”

Incidentally, Ricci’s former house remains intact, standing and undamaged. 